Quote of the Week: Michael Allen Gillespie. This Week, With Commentary

Last updated on: January 5, 2010 at 4:13 am by Henry Karlson

Quote of the Week: Michael Allen Gillespie. This Week, With Commentary 2010-01-05T04:13:06-05:00 Henry Karlson

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This brief summary of Hobbes’ argument is sufficient to allow us to see the deep connection between theology, politics, and science in his thought. In what follows, I will argue that his dark view of the world is the result of his acceptance of the basic tenets of nominalism, especially as it is received and transmitted by the Reformation. I will further argue that Hobbes transforms this thought in essential ways. Luther and Calvin sought to show that nothing we do on earth can affect our chances of salvation, which depend solely on divine election. Hobbes accepts this doctrine of unconditional election, but he turns it on its head. If nothing we do on earth affects our salvation, then there is no soteriological reason to perform any earthly action. Properly understood, the nominalist doctrine of divine omnipotence and the Calvinist notion of election that follows from it thus undermine the authority of religion in secular affairs. Therefore, it is not the rejection of religion that produces natural and political science but the theological demonstration of religious irrelevance for life in this world.

Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 209-210.

Commentary below:

I chose this quote because it does well to tie the connection between nominalism and the reformation, and between the reformation’s view of the world and modernity. Gillespie does a good job pointing out the two main streams of modernity:

The differences between Descartes and Hobbes are crucial and central to the bifurcation of modernity. There is one strain of modern thought that begins with Descartes and includes Leibniz, Malebranche, Spinoza, Kant, Fichte, Hehel, Schopenhauer, and most contemporary continental philosophers. There is a second beginning with Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Mill, and includes many contemporary Anglo-American thinkers. These two strains of thought represent alternative answers to the fundamental problem posed by the nominalist God within the framework of modern science. The differences between them turn on a number of issues, but the question of the nature and relationship of man and God is of central importance. Ibid., 39-40.

Hobbes is easy to see as the man of the reformation:

The importance of free will is vastly diminished in Hobbes’ thought. In fact, Hobbes denies that human beings have a free will, characterizing the will as simply the last appetite before action. For Hobbes, human life is lived within nature and is always constrained by the natural world. Man is more a creature than a creator, more governed by laws than law-giving. Ibid. 42.

This, as was noted above, was the foundation for the line of philosophical thought which was to come into the United States, influencing not only its political ideology, but its culture as well.

It has been asked by some, what exactly is Calvinism? It is a system of thought which possesses all kinds of branches, a genus with many species. Like Plato for Platonism, Calvin serves as a founder for a line of thought, but the line does not have to mirror with, or agree with, its originator; nor do members or founders of divergent branches necessarily agree with each other. But there are common elements which put them together. One central one is the role of God has for humanity. Simplified, it is: God disposes, and man obeys.

Some might mention a universalist branch which developed in Calvinism — it is not difficult to see why this would happen: God is in complete control; God seeks to save all; so therefore, one should expect he will indeed do that. Theologically, universalism has always had this tie with Calvinism, and it is why universalism as universalism has always been rejected: it is fatalism denying free will in humanity. While most Calvinists do not follow this view, its ability to be a Calvinist position is easily ascertained.

The reason why universalism and its tie to Calvinism is worth mentioning is that this shows that the influence of Calvinism on the US is not univocal. It has produced several different traditions (some being non-religious, such as American free market system and its materialistic understanding of beatitude, with the rich and the poor taking the place of the saved and the damned). One form, as some people have noted elsewhere, is universalism. There is no denial of that connection. And it is true many of the universalists ended up being labeled liberals (according to the American use of the term liberal). But this is not the only influence of Calvinism on America, and it is not with the “liberals” one finds its primary influence. Rather, it is the whole system of American politics in which this influence is to be found. Thus, it is not merely an issue of the left or the right, but that the whole American political spectrum that is influenced by Calvinism. Both the left and the right are following through with the Calvinist-inspired modernist pedigree (which is properly known as liberalism) — the pedigree which Gillespie traces to Hobbes (the work deals with much more than this; he rightfully points out that modernism itself can be traced back to the debates between realists and nominalists, with the use nominalists being the moderns).

Perhaps one of the best ways to see this Calvinist aspect of American politics is to look to our two party system. What has happened with it? Partisan politics, with members of one party looking at their own party as the good, justified party, while the opposing party is evil and to be entirely rejected and destroyed. One party is to be saved, the other party is to be damned.

For the Catholic, this kind of reasoning fails. This is not only because no one party can be said to be “good,” but no party is completely evil. TULIP is to be rejected. One must be willing to encourage the good while rejecting errors, and one must do it without thinking if it in religious terms (such as when some people think one party is “God’s own party”). This is not to say one can’t focus on the errors of one more than another. Indeed, it is often important to do so, if those errors have otherwise gone unnoticed. But in doing so, it should never be done with the Catholic rejection of TULIP, and not with Calvinist dualism.

Sadly, American Catholic commentary rarely follows this Catholic principle; instead it falls back under the Calvinist mantle given to it by the culture, considering one group or party completely evil, the other, if not good, at least justified by God for what it does for rejecting the evil.

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